With your proud service, I’m absolutely confident that the United States of America will meet the tests of our time. We will remain the land of opportunity. And we will stay strong as the greatest force for freedom and human dignity that the world has ever known.
If we remember this — if you stay true to the lessons you’ve learned here on the Thames, if we hold fast to what keeps us strong and unique among nations, then I am confident that future historians will look back on this moment and say that when we faced the test of our time, we stood our watch. We did our duty.
I’m asking you to pay them back by seeking to have the same kind of impact with your own lives; by pursuing excellence in everything you do; by serving this country that you love.
Pursue success. Do not falter. When you make it, pull somebody else up. Preserve our dream. Remember your life is richer when people around you have a shot at opportunity as well. Strive to widen that circle of possibility; strive to forge that big, generous, optimistic vision of America that we inherited; strive to carry that dream forward to future generations.
Acts of sacrifice and decency without regard to what’s in it for you — that also creates ripple effects — ones that lift up families and communities; that spread opportunity and boost our economy; that reach folks in the forgotten corners of the world who, in committed young people like you, see the true face of America: our strength, our goodness, our diversity, our enduring power, our ideals.
To the people of Joplin and the Class of 2012, the road has been hard and the day has been long. But we have tomorrow, so we march. We march together, and you’re leading the way, because you’re from Joplin.
If more communities invest in young people like you, if you give back, if we all keep fighting to put opportunity within the reach of everybody who is willing to work for it — America will be stronger, your future will be brighter. There is no limit to what we can do together.
We can always be greater. We can always aspire to something more. That doesn’t depend on who you elect to office. It depends on you, as citizens, how big you want us to be, how badly you want to see these changes for the better.
A dream of brighter days ahead, a faith in things not seen, a belief that here, in this country, we are the authors of our own destiny. That is what Hampton is all about. And it now falls to you, the Class of 2010, to write the next great chapter in America’s story; to meet the tests of your own time; to take up the ongoing work of fulfilling our founding promise.
Success may not come quickly or easily. But if you strive to do what’s right, if you work harder and dream bigger, if you set an example in your own lives and do your part to help meet the challenges of our time, then I’m confident that, together, we will continue the never-ending task of perfecting our union.
America needs you to reach high and hope deeply. And if you fight for your seat at the table, and you set a better example, and you persevere in what you decide to do with your life, I have every faith not only that you will succeed, but that, through you, our nation will continue to be a beacon of light for men and women, boys and girls, in every corner of the globe.
And then America happened. A place where destiny was not a destination, but a journey to be shared and shaped and remade by people who had the gall, the temerity to believe that, against all odds, they could form “a more perfect union” on this new frontier.
When your journey seems too hard, and when you run into a chorus of cynics who tell you that you’re being foolish to keep believing or that you can’t do something, or that you should just give up, or you should just settle — you might say to yourself a little phrase that I’ve found handy these last eight years: Yes, we can.
Be curious, not cool. Be virtuous and purposeful. Do good things, help others. Do not get frozen in the ice of your own indifference. Don’t confuse success with excellence, those Benjamins are a means not an end. Do not descend too deeply into specialism, educate all of your parts, you will be healthier.
I would like to share 5 lessons what did I learn at the kitchen table: First, do your best; Second, find your purpose; Third, listen to understand; Fourth, be honest always; And fifth, include one more. I’ve learned, time and again, how fundamental these lessons have been and continue to be.
Duke Class of 2021: I wish you lives with Desmond’s kind of love: Love for our neighbors—and for people who feel like they’re a world apart. Love for justice—defined by a spirit of mutuality and community. Love for a world where we don’t need to win at someone else’s expense, even if they’re Tar Heels—where we can win together.
Everything I’ve done in my life is a result of persistence. And I challenge all of you to do the same. We’ve all had a New Orleans education. I lived in New Orleans for four years as well. Cultivate what you’ve learned, make something special out of it. And never give up.
As you go forward today, use your minds and hands and your hearts to build something bigger than yourselves. Always remember, there is no idea bigger than this. As Dr. Martin Luther King said, “All life is interrelated. We are all bound together into a single garment of destiny.”
I graduated from the University of Life. All right? I received a degree from the School of Hard Knocks. And our colors were black and blue, baby. I had office hours with the Dean of Bloody Noses. All right? I borrowed my class notes from Professor Knuckle Sandwich and his Teaching Assistant, Ms. Fat Lip Thon Nyun. That’s the kind of school I went to for real, okay?
I believe we are finally creating the scientific and technological tools to turn the world into a neighborhood. And that gives you an amazing ethical opportunity no one has ever had before. I hope you will use to the tool of technology to do what you already had it in your heart to do. To connect. To make of this world a brotherhood and a sisterhood.
